Comment by wkoszek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wkoszek | Hacker News Reader

Weird. Company full of Open Source guys, but I think they didn't get the right advice on a business model. The reason why MIT/BSD/Apache licenses are there is that there's a group of people who want to let companies use their stuff. If you want people pay you, you just release commercial software, without showing the source. License is something that once put in, it's too late to change later, and not disrupt how your technology is used in the field.

e.g.: I was contributing to FreeBSD because I wanted to contribute to BSD licensed-software, with a hope people from FANG would use it, and maybe hire me later. If FreeBSD made a chance to the license, it'd no longer be FreeBSD. It'd be FreeCommonsClause--different project. I wouldn't like to contribute to this.

As a CEO fo a software company, if I were to go and analyze what this license change means to my business, and probably get uncertain answer, I'd rather fork Redis from before the license change, and run on the copy.

Why? Because the fee for a US software engineer is $X, for a over-sees is $0.3X or $0.5X. Fee for a US copyright lawyer with expertise in software is 10$X. Pay that much money for no value-added to my business makes no sense to me.

Sorry for spamming this all over the post, but I think it's important enough for everyone to see this:

Redis itself IS NOT changing licenses, and if you only use the core Redis product you are unaffected. This license change only applies (or _will_ apply, I guess) to some source-available addon Redis modules. (I'm not sure if any existing open-source modules developed by Redis Labs will have their license changed, or if this will only apply to modules published after the announcement.)

Full disclosure: Am a Redis Labs employee, although not here in any official capacity.

Since you're spamming this everywhere, I'll repeat _my_ concerns.

1) Some of us no longer trust the company not to bait-and-switch again. 2) It's almost guaranteed that at least future useful developments will happen under the proprietary and consulting-encumbered license.

I'll admit the company has every right to execute on #2 - t is 100% without doubt going to have me reconsidering our use of redis here, and keeping a very close eye on what Amazon and Google (and others) do in response to this, as I decide what alternative to the consulting-encumbered software we might use going forward.

Re. 1, that's a fair point. For what it's worth, the blog post does explicitly promise, in writing, that Redis itself will remain BSD-licensed forever. Take that for what you will, since I certainly don't have any more info on their intentions than you do (and probably would be prohibited from talking about it if I did), and you have no reason to trust me any more than the blog. I believe a written commitment under a company's official domain should at least have some legal weight, though IANAL.

Re. 2, I /personally/ believe the BSD-licensed Redis itself will continue to be developed and improved as before, but I hope you appreciate why I'm being very cautious about what I say. I'm not really positioned or authorized to make any statements on behalf of Redis Labs.

> believe a written commitment under a company's official domain should at least have some legal weight, though IANAL.

It doesn’t. It’s a promise made by someone who just reneged on another implicit promise.

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